I hope the campaign goes well. Don't give up fighting- this may not succeed
now, but it's only a matter of time before the world of
manufacturer-controlled devices comes undone.
Anyway, my parent have unfortunately prevented me from funding the campaign.
It's not because of the campaign itself- thankfully- but because they're
concerned about the no-warranty, pay now make later nature of crowdfunding.
I'm quite frustrated, as this project is an immensely exciting prospect for
supporters of user-controlled devices, but there's not a lot I can do (the
decision would appear to be well-meaning anyway- there is a lot of fraud out
there on the net, sadly).
As such, I'm quite hopeful for the future of this project. Even if it doesn't
get off the ground as a mass-manufactured product, I'm sure it will find some
way to make it to market. The fact is that libre software supporters and
environmental activists are all willing to tolerate higher prices and
lower-quality products if that's what it takes to get something ethical.
Whatever it takes, we will get our EOMA68 computer cards!
Overall, the negative statement that "this campaign is going to fail" is, if
not inaccurate, irrelevant. The EOMA68 concept is so standard to the
commercial status quo that a standard had to be developed from scratch for
something a child could think up. The concept of modular computing really
isn't that innovative- I'm neither ingenious nor smart, yet I could make the
leap from booting GNU/Linux off a USB to booting it off a portable (usb) hard
drive, and from there to having a standalone GNU/Linux machine which you
could pull in and out of a 'shell' with a monitor/keyboard/mouse etc. Yet no
company had developed something so obviously revolutionary to its full
potential before this came along. For this reason alone, we should be
preaching about the campaign every chance we get. ThinkPenguin, wonderful as
they are, surely aren't the only company who would put some money into this
project as something other than investors. Even if our voices can't convince
corporations to work with the project, firmware-level rootkits, rising
hardware replacement costs, or a boycott certainly will. It may not happen
now, but one day the world will wake up to the dangers of consumerism. From
there onwards, it's all downhill.
I apologise for the length of this post. I know my verbose two cents may not
be appreciated- I apologise profusely if that's the case- but I hope it has a
positive effect on someone somewhere. It just really irritates me that people
get frustrated with this project. Frustration isn't bad, for sure, but the
issues are obvious to anyone who looks at this project- it's the benefits
that need to be highlighted.
